“What else would I do?” she said. “I’ve only got a job.”
TEN minutes later, I was in Harry’s office with my father’s policy in hand. I’d found it in one of the kitchen drawers. I didn’t really intend to, but, wound up as I was, I pretty much threw it onto his desk.
“Ray, what the hell’s up with you?”
“That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes, this is what I wanted. Ray, really, what’s going on? It’s about Thomas, isn’t it?”
I forced myself to sit down. I felt as though I’d had coffee injected directly into my veins.
“Sort of. But not exactly. I mean, it started off with Thomas, but now it’s something bigger. And I need to talk to you about it.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if steeling himself. “Fire away.”
I had to take a deep breath myself. “Thomas saw something. Online. He was going through various streets in New York and he spotted something in a third-floor window.”
Harry listened while I told him the whole thing. Thomas’s belief that what he’d seen was a murder. My trip to New York. His call to the landlord. The altered image, the murders in Chicago, and a missing woman.
“Good Lord,” Harry said. “I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.”
“I feel I’ve got to call the police, but I tried that once already, and it didn’t go well.”
“There’s a shocker.”
Everyone was a smart-ass today.
“Yeah, it went badly,” I said. “But it’s reached the point where I have to do something. I thought maybe you’d have some words of wisdom. God knows I could use a few.”
“Well, I think your instincts are well intentioned. Calling the police does seem like the right thing to do. But let me ask you a few questions first.” He sat forward in his chair. “First, how do you know Whirl360 doesn’t periodically review the street scenes it’s posted, and if the program finds something it overlooked before, it doesn’t make a change?”
That had not occurred to me. “I don’t know. If what you’re suggesting were the case, I still think it’s pretty amazing that the change got made within a couple of days of Thomas finding it, and my knocking on the door of that apartment.”
“You may be right. But, Ray, is it possible the image was never there in the first place?”
“Harry, Thomas didn’t imagine it. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it the day Thomas found it.”
“What I’m asking you is, is it possible Thomas put it there?”
That stopped me. “What?”
“Could Thomas have fiddled with the image that you saw on his computer, to make it look like the woman in that window was being smothered?”
I didn’t have to give that much thought. “Thomas doesn’t have the skills or know-how to hack into Whirl360 and fiddle with the images.”
“Okay,” Harry said, nodding. “But what if he were able to change the image on just his own computer? I don’t know—manipulate it somehow and insert it. And then later, when you thought the image had been tampered with, it was actually back to the way it was before Thomas started messing about with it.”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t…I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever see this image on any computer other than Thomas’s?”
That stopped me. “No.” I shook my head. “But the landlord did confirm that there used to be a couple of women living there, and that one of them was reported missing.”
“What else did the landlord tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything. It was Thomas who talked to him.”
Harry Peyton didn’t say anything.
“Oh, come on, Harry. Are you saying Thomas made up all that stuff from the landlord?”
“I didn’t say that, Ray,” he said. “But…”
“The name Thomas got from the landlord checked out, same as the one in the Times story.”
“Thomas doesn’t have access to the Times Web site? He couldn’t have already read it, before he gave you that name? Ray, I’m only asking you the questions the police are going to.”
I slumped in the chair. “No, no, that’s not possible. The thing is, I believe Thomas. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I don’t think he doctored any images. I believe he talked to the landlord. And, Harry, Julie did not make up what she found out from the Whirl360 people. Two people were murdered. People who are linked to this image on the Web site.”
“I hear you, Ray.”
“Yeah, but I get what you’re saying, too. Even if I tell the cops our suspicions, I’m probably not going to have much more luck than last time.”
Harry shrugged and eyed me with sympathy. “Look, I’m not saying you are, but what if you’re wrong about Thomas? What if—and please forgive me for this—but what if this thing he saw was something that was pointed out to him during one of his conversations with President Clinton?”
I ran my palm over my forehead. A major storm front of a headache was moving in. A migraine monsoon. “I appreciate your caution, Harry. But there’s something going on. There has to be a way to get this information to the cops. They need to hear the whole story before they dismiss it.”
Harry mulled that one over. “I have a friend. Barry Duckworth, a detective with the Promise Falls police. Maybe if I were to approach him, act as an intermediary. Barry knows and trusts me, so if, after I explain everything to him, he thinks there’s anything worth checking out, he can follow it up with you. Or he can call the NYPD. He’ll be able to get someone to listen to him.”
I liked it. Harry had credibility. He was a trusted member of the community. I might not get far trying to tell this tale to Duckworth, but Harry’d be able to get the whole thing out before Duckworth hung up on him, or threw him out the door. And Duckworth, in turn, would have credibility with another police department.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” I suddenly nodded with enthusiasm. A heavy weight began to lift from my shoulders. “I appreciate this, Harry. I do.”
“No problem.”
I stood, but something was holding me there.
“Something else on your mind?” Harry asked.
“I don’t even know whether to mention it,” I said. “But maybe Dad said something to you about this sometime.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thomas said to me—I’m trying to remember his exact words—but he said something like ‘things happen in windows.’ And then, when he was pissed with me, when he didn’t think I’d done a very thorough investigation in New York, he said I was acting the same way I had before when someone in a window was in trouble.”
Harry pressed his lips together. “Sounds like he was talking about himself,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “And there’s another thing. Something Len Prentice said.”
“Yes?”
“Len came by the house when I was in the city. He got Thomas riled up. Tried to get him to leave the house for lunch and Thomas refused to go, and he kind of hit Len. Struck him.”
Harry’s eyes widened. “Oh my.”
“Nothing really happened, and Len isn’t pressing the point. But he said Dad told him Thomas had pushed him down the stairs, and when I talked to Thomas about it, he more or less admitted it.”
“Your father never mentioned anything about that to me,” Harry said.
“Thomas said Dad was trying to tell him he was sorry, about something that had happened to Thomas when he was thirteen, but Thomas said he didn’t want to talk about it, and that’s when he pushed Dad. He landed on his back.”
“Dear God,” Harry said.
“But Dad wasn’t angry. Or so Thomas says. Dad supposedly said he’d understand if Thomas couldn’t forgive him.”
“Did you ask Thomas what it was?”
“I tried, but he’s not saying,” I said. “I’ll try again, when the time seems right. What could Dad have done to Thomas that he’d feel the need to apologize for, after all these years?”
; I caught Harry looking at the clock.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m like an episode of As the World Turns. Thanks for everything, Harry.”
I was walking to the car when my cell rang.
“Me,” Julie said.
“You still at the house.”
“Yeah.”
“Thomas okay?”
“Yeah. I went upstairs, asked him to go on Whirl360 and show me my sister Candace’s place. All I had to do was tell him the name of it and that it was in New York and he found it.”
“What place?”
“She runs a bakery, specializing in cupcakes, in Greenwich Village. Lives over her shop.”
“That cupcake place? The famous one everyone’s always lined up for? The one that was in Sex and the City?”
“You watched Sex and the City?”
“Uh, maybe a couple of times.”
“It’s not that cupcake place. It’s another one. Anyway, he found it on West Eighth just like that. It’s called Candy’s, in case you ever want to go there. So, how’d it go at the lawyer’s?”
I told her how Harry Peyton was going to act as an intermediary between the police and myself.
“Sounds good,” Julie said. “I know Duckworth. I’ve gotten quotes from him a few times. Listen, Ray,” and her voice went very serious, “I found out something else. I did a news search on Allison Fitch this morning and came up with nothing, and decided to try it again this afternoon, on your dad’s laptop, and I got a hit.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Just a short story, out of Tampa. A woman with that name was found dead at a hotel there.”
Not again. Every time Julie started looking for people attached to this mess…
“You there, Ray?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”
“Can I tell you something, Ray?”
“Sure.”
“I think this whole thing is getting really fucking weird.”
FORTY-EIGHT
“HELLO?”
“Thomas, it’s Bill Clinton.”
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“I’m very good, sir.”
“Thomas, I wanted to remind you how valuable you are to us. Do you know what the phrase ‘black ops’ means?”
“Those are secret missions?”
“That’s right. Covert operations run by the CIA and other government agencies. Operations that the White House has to be able to deny any knowledge of should they somehow become public.”
“Okay.”
“When we have operatives in the field, conducting black ops–style missions, they can run into trouble, the kind where they have to slip away in a hurry. That’s why you’re so important. Not just if all the online maps disappear one day, or there’s another earthquake or tornado. So you never know when we’ll call, asking for your suggestions on an escape route.”
“I understand.”
“The reason I’m calling is to tell you, again, that there are things in your past you shouldn’t be talking about, or else the folks at the CIA are going to lose confidence in you. You’ll look weak. Or worse, like a tattletale. You understand?”
“I do.”
“Good. That’s good to hear.”
“Can I ask you something…Bill?”
“Go right ahead.”
“My brother and I, well, mostly me, but we were talking about aliens the other day, and I wondered, when you were president, did you find out what really happened at Roswell? Do they have an alien spaceship there?”
“Thomas, you fulfill your mission successfully, and I’ll tell you everything.”
FORTY-NINE
NICOLE called Lewis in the morning from Florida and told him it was done. Lewis told her to catch the first flight north that she could. She’d found Allison Fitch, and he’d found the man who’d paid a visit to her apartment. Together, they were going to retrieve him. A man named Ray Kilbride.
“Retrieve?” Nicole said.
“We have to know what he knows. We have to know why he was there. My employer wants to talk to him.”
“Whatever.”
“And you’re not flying to New York,” Lewis told her. He gave her another destination, closer to where they’d find Kilbride. “I’m heading up that way now.”
“Fine,” she said, and ended the call.
Then Lewis contacted Howard Talliman.
“She’s been found. And she’s no longer a problem,” Lewis said. He felt safe discussing these things with Howard, knowing that the man had a security expert who swept his office every morning for listening devices.
“That’s a great relief, Lewis.”
“And I’m heading north to deal with our other problem.”
“It’s still too early to relax.”
“I agree,” Lewis said.
“We have to know why Kilbride had that printout. We have to know why he was there. Have you any reason to believe he’s anything other than what he purports to be?”
“He’s an illustrator. Plain and simple.”
“Not everyone is who they appear to be, Lewis.”
“I know. But I’ve torn his life apart since finding out he’s our guy. I’ve got his Social Security number. He’s got fifty-four bucks charged to his Visa card. He lives frugally. He’s paid off his mortgage. Last year he reported an income of $73,675 to the IRS. He drives an Audi Q5. He’s gotten four speeding tickets in the last ten years but other than that his record is clean. Never been married. Got a brother named Thomas who lives with their father in Promise Falls. That sound like some undercover CIA guy to you?”
“No, but it doesn’t make any sense for someone who makes his living doing silly drawings to show up at a murder scene with that printout in hand. Did he stumble upon the image online and then come investigating, or did he already have an inkling of what had happened at that address before he went looking for the image? Either scenario is troubling, but the latter particularly so. No illustrator would be doing that. A private detective might be. An FBI agent might be.” Howard paused, as though steeling himself for his next thought. “As might someone from the CIA.”
“Howard, I’ve told you what I know. When you’ve got the son of a bitch in front of you, you can ask him whatever you want. I’m gonna fly up, rent a van there.”
“Keep me informed,” Howard said, concluding the conversation.
Howard had always known the Goldsmith matter might still come back and bite them in the ass, even though the man was dead. But did it really make sense that the CIA might be sniffing around Orchard Street? There had to be people at Langley who already knew everything. For God’s sake, the plan had originated there. It wasn’t as if this whole thing had been Morris’s idea from the outset.
Was it possible that those left behind after Goldsmith’s death were covering their asses by finding a way to lay off more of their troubles on Morris? But even then, how had they connected Morris to Orchard Street? Had they also been keeping tabs on Bridget? Learned of her link to Allison Fitch? Which could have led them to the Web, and the image, and—
It did seem far-fetched.
And yet, some facts were not in dispute. This man Ray Kilbride had shown up at Allison Fitch’s apartment, presumably led there by an online image of Bridget Sawchuck’s murder.
Howard felt he needed to talk to Sawchuck. To sound him out on a few things, without actually telling him about Fitch, or Kilbride, or what had happened at Orchard Street, because Morris still had no idea how his wife had actually died.
That she had not killed herself. That she had been murdered as a direct result of an action taken by Morris’s best friend.
Morris picked up on the third ring. “Just on my way to lunch with the mayor,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said, Morris. About how you think it’s time. I know you think I’m not listening to you, but I am. I know what you’re feeling.”
“Funny you should mention it, Howa
rd. I’ve been wondering who you are lately. I’ve been wondering what happened to the Howard I used to know. The one who liked to takes chances and stir up some shit.”
“I don’t mind stirring up shit, but I don’t want you stepping in it,” Howard said. “Which is why I’ve been stepping very carefully of late. You’re my friend, Morris. Any advice I give you, you need to know that I’m giving it to you as a friend first.”
Morris waited a moment before responding. “Okay.”
“I’ve been thinking about how you want to move forward, and I think the only thing that’s holding us back is our uncertainty with regard to the Goldsmith matter.”
“Right.”
“I need a certain comfort level, Morris, that we’re done with that.”
“I concur. The fact is, Howard, ever since Goldsmith—poor Barton, God bless his soul—took his own life, I’ve felt that the risks have been minimized. The scandal of it all, being branded as some kind of traitor to his own government, it was more than he could bear, and totally unfair. His number one concern was always for Americans, for their safety.”
Howard paused, then said, “Morris, do you think it’s conceivable that people within the agency would have any reason to be monitoring you in the wake of all this?”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Let’s imagine a hypothetical. Let’s suppose the CIA had people watching you. Just suppose. What would their motives be?”
“The only one I can think of is, those who were close to Goldsmith, those who know what he was doing, who were complicit in what he was doing, would be worried I might come forward. But they’d also know that such an action on my part would be political suicide.”
Howard concurred. “Do you think, in the early stages of this, before Barton took his own life, he might have had people watching you and, I don’t know, maybe even Bridget?”
“Why the hell would they be watching me or Bridget? Is something going on I don’t know about?”
“Of course not. You know I tell you everything.”
“That’s never been true, Howard. You tell me everything I need to know, and don’t tell me the things it’s better I not know.”
Howard had to agree with that, too. “All I’m saying is, before you get back in the game, we have to imagine certain scenarios, as unlikely as they may be, and develop strategies for dealing with them.”
Trust Your Eyes Page 30
